Poems from an Officers Desk
by Before he exits
Summary: Dick's secret with the ladies? Poetry. They're suckers for the sensitive guy, he can't wear the tights all the time to get them to chase after him. However not all is mean to be shared, or for pick up lines. But Dick should know better then to leave his personal poems on his desk, their are thieves running around all the time, office and manor. Sorry about lines format issue!
1. The Cape

Once there was a symbol I saw as hope; a cape

A cape that flowed across the broken city scape

But my own life cut from the trapeze

And both the green and the black cape where put on much too late

Wearing my own it was hard to believe it stood for hope and not hate

* * *

He claims it's justice, that it's fighting for a city he believes in

To save it from the tragedy of those masked in shadow and sin

But after feeling the same loss, after looking my own killer in the face

I know he's a liar, that it's all a charade

The cape was black for a reason, black for hate. Not for crimes own personal parade

* * *

The hate; not the money, not the fame, not the right

Not the law or the system, the hate makes you fight

It fuels the stand up, the kicks and the growth of a bullet filled side

It makes the machines in the hospital keep beeping by

It was the hate that lifted you up and allowed you to fly

* * *

But if you weren't careful, the hate could snag on a scrapper

It could rip at your wing, and you would be the martyred crusader

It could pull off the cowl, in the most unpleasant of ways

It could leave a pounding in your breaking heart and open head

It could swallow the scales, the yellow green and red

* * *

It could tear at the symbol till all color drained

Till sweat and till tears all mixed as it rained

It could break open the armor

It could make you madder than venom spray

And cause twice the pain as the mask you wore in the day

* * *

Hate drives what you do, what I do too

Though you can't let it take over, you can't let it control you

Because hate only leads to the fate you faced, now forced on others; all it does is force a repeat

You can't let it deceive, and play games as well as the clown

For madness and its counterpart are not defined by whacked stretched smiles and cowl covered frowns

* * *

Forcing a repeat, of what fate already knew was a mistake

I left, two died, and the other moved away; all of us gone due to fate

All of us gone in one form or another, some forever others just a call

But he doesn't hear that, not even from me

Or I guess I hope it's a clue he missed, one he didn't see

* * *

He's only been dead a few months now, barely long enough to morn,

I know I'll look up and see the same costume I once had worn

And I'll watch as the grin stretches like madness

For the clown's right he really is mad to lie to his hope for his hate

I'll watch and wonder how fast of a rate will be made by the inescapable cape's fate

* * *

But besides all of that

Alfred only knows how many more dead robins, Bruce can take


	2. Back to Gotham

Back to Gotham, back to my perch

Back to a sky that many birds already roam

Back to where the trapeze carried over its curse

* * *

Back to a place where curses are repeated after they reverse

Back to where Robins are never mourned just replaced by a clone

Back to Gotham, back to my perch

* * *

Back to no matter what sacrifice is made, the madness gets worse

Back to where the Clown Prince sits on his thrown

Back to where the trapeze carried over its curse

* * *

Back to the start of my most heroic of verse

Back to the first chance at hope I had known

Back to Gotham, back to my perch

* * *

Back to the place where half of the cars are a hearse

Back to the place that lingered in black tone

Back to where the trapeze carried over its curse

* * *

Back to where a duo had long since rehearsed

Back to the place that will forever be home

Back to Gotham, back to my perch

Back to where the trapeze carried over its curse


	3. Jay bird

At first he was just a replacement I suppose

Though I was determined not to be as bitter as the old man had grown

Instead of a replacement I looked at it as music that we needed to transpose

Instead it was time for there to be a new heir to the bat thrown

* * *

I guess a friend should have made the state of the city better known

I should have said it leaves you morally in doubt

It would make your own insides a combat zone

I should have told him that was why I wanted the hell out

* * *

But friendship wasn't what our relationship was about

I didn't want it to be protégé against prodigy because maybe he'll be a partner someday

Instead brothers we'd be, the outshining we would do without

For that would only tamper with the color turning the cape grey

* * *

Unfortunately, Gotham it seems will never let happiness take over

Unless it's your death at the hands of a laughing Joker


End file.
